Furnishings of Note: Artwork, with paintings hung in tiers. Jefferson's inventory, presumably made in 1809, lists for this room: "Portraits - 24; Paintings - 17; Medals - 10; Busts - 2; Miscellaneous - 4." Among the portraits were represented key figures in Jefferson's thinking and in American and world history. Jefferson displayed portraits of the "three greatest men that have ever lived" – John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon – as well as discoverers such as Columbus and Magellan, and American notables such as Washington, Franklin, and Madison.2The room held many chairs of varying designs, including several acquired in France and upholstered in crimson damask. The room contained several other chairs and sofas of varying styles, purchased elsewhere or made in the Monticello joinery.

Several tables for cards or other amusements were in the room, as well as musical instruments such as a harpsichord and pianoforte. Two gilded pier mirrors enhanced the light in the room, and the curtains on the windows were made from Jefferson's sketches.3

Primary Source References

1796. (Isaac Weld). "In the center is another spacious apartment, of an octagon form, reaching from the front to the rear of the house, the large folding glass doors of which, at each end, open under a portico."4

1782 April 13. (Marquis de Chastellux). "The ground floor consists chiefly of a large and lofty salon, or drawing room, which is to be decorated entirely in the antique style ...."5

1805 June 26. (Jefferson to James Dinsmore). "I inclose you two specimens of cherry, one done with boiled linseed oil, the other with the newspaper composition you referred to. I think the former the best; but am inclined to believe that daily rubbing with wax will soon produce the same effect. I rather think therefore of leaving the floor to time to give it's proper colour."8

1806 September 21. (Anna Maria Thornton). "The floor of the drawing room is laid with Beech and cherry tree woods in a very neat manner, it costs 200$ and the workman said he wou'd not do another like it for 400$."9

1814. (Francis Gray). "After half an hour's conversation with Mr. Jefferson and Col. Randolph, we were invited into the parlour where a fire was just kindled and a servant occupied in substituting a wooden pannel for a square of glass, which had been broken in one of the folding doors opening on the lawn. Mr. Jefferson had procured the glass for his house in Bohemia, where the price is so much the square foot whatever be the size of the glass purchased, and these panes were so large that, unable to replace the square in this part of the country, he had been obliged to send to Boston to have some glass made of sufficient size to replace that broken, and this had not yet been received."10

1815 February 7. (George Ticknor). "... the drawing room, – a large and rather elegant room, twenty or thirty feet high, – which, with the hall I have described, composed the whole centre of the house, from top to bottom. The floor of this room is tessellated. It is formed of alternate diamonds of cherry and beach, and kept polished as highly as if it were of fine mahogany. Here are the best pictures of the collection. Over the fireplace is the Laughing and Weeping Philosophers, dividing the world between them; on its right, the earliest navigators to America, – Columbus, Americus Vespuccious, Magellan, etc., – copied, Mr. Jefferson said, from originals in the Florence Gallery. Farther round, Mr. Madison in the plain, Quaker-like dress of his youth, Lafayette in his Revolutionary uniform, and Franklin in the dress in which we always see him."11

1830 February. (Anne Royall). "But the floor was a great curiosity, done in Mosaic, by Dinsemore and Nelson, it consisted of alternate, very bright brown wood, about ten inches, octagon shape, of a spruce of cherry color: this again was empaled with a narrow strip of white, I should think, the border is also octagon, and both of ivory smoothness – these are alternately checkered throughout."12

Further Sources

Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. A Day in the Life of Thomas Jefferson: "A Delightful Recreation." Discusses family activities in the parlor.